After their arrival in India, in 1498, the Portuguese contacted numerous regions until then unknown to them, or about whom they had quite vague and confused information, often incorrect.
In the following years, in order to be able to incorporate the new lands and people discovered in their vision of the world, they had to carry out an enormous and systematic survey of information about the geography and anthropology of the Asiatic continent, mainly its coastline, either through a direct contact with numerous Oriental regions, or through the resource to verbal or written information of Asiatic origin.
This gathering was so extensive and precise, that by about 1516, besides the proliferation of various texts of fragmented character, two big global descriptive geographies of Asia by the Portuguese were practically concluded: Suma Oriental (Oriental Summary) by Tomé Pires and Livro das cousas do Oriente(Book of the Things of the Orient) by Duarte Barbosa. 2
One of the lands the Portuguese heard of before long in their first voyages to the Indian Ocean was China: by the somehow tardy testimony of Gaspar Correia, we know that in 1500, the Portuguese trading post of Calicut (presently, Kozichode) was established in the chinacota, the old fortress of the Chins. 3 Garcia da Orta refers in his Colóquios [dos Simples e Drogas da India] (Colloquies [of Simples and Drugs of India]) that this fortress was one of the many vestiges left along all the Asian coastline by the big Chinese expeditions of the first half of the fifteenth century4 -- maybe it would be interesting to mark here the parallelism between the Portuguese and Chinese expansions in the decades of the fifteenth century. As Garcia da Orta says: "[...] os Chins navegaram esta terra muito tempo há [... e...] eram tantos os navios da China que navegavam, que contem os de Ormuz que acham em seus livros que em uma maré entraram na ilha de [...] Ormuz quatrocentos juncos." ("[...] the Chinese sailed to this land a longtime ago [... and...] there were so many ships sailing from China, that the people from Hormuz say they find in their books that in one tide four hundred junks entered the island of[....] Hormuz."). 5
Only two years after, in 1502, the so-called planisphere of Cantino, prepared by a anonymous Portuguese cartographer who systematized the knowledge on the East then available in Portugal, mentioned, in an inscription placed close to Malacca, "[...] the land of the Chins (Chinese)."6
Despite China being then not much more than a name, and a promise of products as valuable as the silk and porcelain, it had started to increase curiosity in the Portuguese overseas elements, as various indications pointed to its importance in the Asiatic political and commercial panorama. And in such a way that when Diogo Lopes de Sequeira left for the Orient, in April of 1508 he carried in his orders instructions quite precise about the inquiries he should pursue to obtain one image minimally precise about the Chins:
"[...] perguntareis pelos Chins, e de que partes vêm e de quão longe, e de quanto em quanto vêm a Malaca [...], e as mercadorias que trazem, e quantas naus deles vêm cada ano, e pelas feições das suas naus, [...] e se têm feitores ou casa em Malaca [...], e se são mercadores ricos, e se são homenbs fracos, se guerreiros, e se têm armas ou artilharia, e que vestidos trazem, [...] e se são cristãos, se gentios, ou se é grande terra a sua, e se têm mais de um rei entre eles, [...] e se não são cristãos, em que crêem ou a que adoram, e que costumes guardam, e para que parte se estende a terra." ("[...] you will ask for the Chins, and from where they come, and how far, and how often they come to Malacca [...], and which merchandises they bring, and how many ships come each year, and the features of their ships, [...], and if they have factors and houses in Malacca [...], and if they are rich merchants, and if they are weak men, or warriors, and if they have guns or artillery, and which clothes do they wear, [...] and if they are Christians, or pagans, or if their land is big, and if they have more than one king among them, [...], and if they are not Christians, in what do they believe or whom do they worship, and which customs they maintain, and to where stretches out their land."). 7
The vectors of interest guiding this conjunt of queries should be noted: commerce and merchandise, bellicose potentialities, physical aspect, political organization, religious creeds, customs, geographical boundaries. We are undertaking a huge anthropological research program, as we would say today, that would take the Portuguese more than one century to fulfill. In 1508, despite the indications already obtained, there was practically no information regarding Chinese matters. China was still a mirage in the Portuguese horizon, with no precisely defined contours.
Since 1508, and the arrival of Lopes de Sequeira to Malacca, the first credible information on China and the Chinese started to be obtained, as the Portuguese found various Chinese junks in the harbour of this city, with whom they established amicable relations. Two years after, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Malacca, and reinforced his relations with the local Chinese. João de Barros says that Albuquerque "fez gasalhado, e folgou muito de praticar com eles pela fama que tinha a potência do seu Rei, grandeza de terra, policia e riqueza dela, e no tratamento das pessoas deles viu parte do que dizia." ("[...] accommodated them, and quite enjoyed the contact with them due to the fame of the power their King had, the vastness of the land, its police and its wealth, and in the treatment of the people he noticed but a part of what was said [about this place]."). 8 But we can not forget that the vision of Barros was quite ulterior to the events, and had into consideration a huge informative account, nonexistent at the time of Malacca's conquest.
Returning to Malacca, Albuquerque took with him a Chinese, and organized his shipment to Portugal. This initiative should be stressed, as it proves the existence of an active curiosity among the Portuguese for the anthropological specificity of other civilizations. Besides, Albuquerque took heed to also send some Chinese objects, that would complete the image transmitted by written information. It is known that he sent a Chinese book to the Court (that was soon offered by King Dom Manuel to Pope Leon X during the famous embassy of Tristão da Cunha to Rome, in 1514, and also a chart representing the coastland of Southern China, copied from a Javanese original.
Since the conquest of Malacca, China was within reach of our navigation. In 1513, the first Portuguese arrived on the Chinese coastline; Jorge Álvares and two companions casted anchor in a small island offshore Guangdong. In 1515, another Portuguese expedition, commanded by Rafael Perestrelo, visited again the Chinese coastland. The first contacts with China were so encouraging, either commercial or diplomatic, that in 1517 the first embassy, led by Tomé Pires had already traveled to Guangzhou.
This choice probably had as justification, besides the eventual diplomatic qualities revealed by the pharmacist Tomé Pires, the fact that a short time before in his Suma Oriental had given the first significant contribution to the origin of China's image in the Portuguese culture. The image Suma transmits about China, besides the customary eulogies method, is not exceptionally worthy.
China was, above all, an important market where it would be possible to make highly profitable transactions. Besides, Tomé Pires was surprised, because, as he writes, the things they narrated about the vastness of that Kingdom "[...] would be more worthy of belief existing in our Portugal than in China." And, in the continuation, dedicated a full paragraph to the discussion of the possibilities to conquest China; in his opinion, it would be relatively easy to obtain the control of the whole Chinese coastline: "[...] com dez naus sobjugaria o governador das indias que tomou Malaca toda a China nas beiras do mar." ("[...] with ten ships the Governor of India, who vanquished Malacca, could subjugate the whole coastline of China."). 9 A sign that the image the Portuguese had about the Chinese Empire was yet quite inaccurate.
But Tomé Pires' embassy did not fulfil its purposes. The ambassador and his retinue were imprisoned, and the relations with the Folang-chi (China) were formally interrupted. This situation was caused, on one side, by a certain prepotency and lack of tact by the Portuguese to approach the Chinese civilization and, on the other side, by the exclusiveness and deliberated policy of isolation professed by the Chinese.
One member of the ambassador's retinue, Cristovão Vieira, wrote a lengthy letter from the prison in Guangzhou, and succeeded in having it reach the hands of the Portuguese who traded on the Chinese coastline, together with another letter written by Vasco Calvo, a Portuguese merchant meanwhile also imprisoned by the Chinese. These letters form the first witnessed description of China to reach Europe since the time of Marco Polo, 10 and are specially valuable due to the fact that Cristovão Vieira had been the only European that in the sixteenth century was successful in sending news to Portugal about his visit to Beijing.
The informative value of these letters can be systematized in three different parts:
1)detailed information about China, namely about the geography, local administration, economic organization, commercial potentialities, bellicose resources in human and material terms, the daily life of the Chinese, the prisons and the judicial system, etc.;
2) testimonies on Tomé Pires' embassy, and on the fate of the embassy members;
3) detailed plans to conquer Guangzhou by the Portuguese, in order to free the captives.
Maybe this third set of information should be emphasised, as the last part of Vieira's letter and practically the whole letter of Calvo intended to instigate the Portuguese authorities to undertake a military expedition against Guangdong. To this end, they contain detailed plans of attack, with the location of the enemy positions, their weak points, landing sites, strategical priorities, estimates of the popular adhesion to the Portuguese attack -- well, an authentic plan of military coordinate operations. The Portuguese prisoners' desperate situation, as well as an obvious underestimation of the Chinese reality doubtlessly explain the importance given in these letters to the Southern China plans of invasion by the Portuguese.
The image of China emerging from these letters is not exceptionally encouraging. Here are a few examples taken from Cristovão Vieira's letter:
1) The Mandarins have "[...] têm amor à gente, não fazem senão roubar, matar, açoitar, pôr tormentos ao povo. É o povo mais mal tratado destes mandarins que é o diabo do inferno. Daqui vem o ovo não ter amor ao rei e aos mandarins, e cada dia se andam alevantando, e fazem-se ladrões." ("[...] no love for people; they only steal, murder, flog, torment the people. These Mandarins are to the people like 'Devils of Hell' since they treat them so cruelly. Thus, the people have no love for the King and his Mandarins, and each day they rebel and become thieves."). 11
2) "Cada dia prendem muitos e soltam menos, e morrem nas cadeias à fome como bichos. Daqui vem o povo a estar em ódio com os mandarins, e desejam novidades para terem alguma liberdade." ("Each day they [the Mandarins] arrest many and release few, and they die from hunger in the prisons like beasts. So, the people hate the Mandarins, and yearn for changes in order to have some freedom."). 12
3) "0 povo é tão sujeito e medroso que não ousa falar. Deste jeito é por toda a terra da China; e muito pior do que digo, pelo qual; toda a gente desja revolta e vinda de portugueses." ("The people are so subjugated and fearful they do not dare to speak. This happens through all Chinese land and is so bad that all the people want to rebel and wish the coming of the Portuguese."). 13
It is natural then, after three years of torture in the prisons of Guangzhou, that Cristovão Vieira would not be specially prone to laud China.
In the first quarter of the century of the Portuguese presence in the Orient, the quantity of information available on China continually increased, but its image did not yet stand out from others from so many other regions: a potential commercial partner and an eventual area of settlement for the Portuguese interests.
In the decades following the unsuccessful embassy of Tomé Pires, despite the official prohibitions, the Portuguese continued to frequent the Chinese coastline, practicing a semilegal traffic with the seashore inhabitants, founding establishments with a permanent character in the islands of Southern China (of which Ningbo and Chinchew are paradigmatic examples), with the relative tolerance of the local authorities.
In 1543, some Portuguese merchants, accidentally far off from their normal course in the offing of the Chinese coast, landed in Japan. Taking advantage from the official break of relations between Japan and China (1549), the Portuguese quickly became mediators in the commerce between these two powers. As the journey between Malacca and Japan was too long, it became urgent to find a safe intermediate landing port on the coastline of China, where simultaneously it would be possible to freely trade with the Chinese. These facts led, around 1557, to the foundation of Macao, in circumstances still today imperfectly known. It is only known that in 1554 Leonel de Sousa reached an agreement with the authorities of Guangzhou to attain legal commercial exchanges between the Portuguese and Chinese, 14and that in the following year there already existed a precarious Portuguese settlement in Macao.
In accordance with the more common version, but not documented, Macao had been granted to the Portuguese in exchange for the help given in the fight against the pirates that ravaged the Southern China seas. It is more probable that the Portuguese presence was tolerated through an ingenious policy of bribing the local Mandarins. But if the Portuguese were interested, essentially for economical reasons, in creating a permanent base in the Chinese coastline, the Chinese, in their turn, wished also to create an emporium where all the contacts with the foreign countries would be centralized -- which, on one side, would allow the authorities of Guangzhou an efficient control of people and merchandise, essential in a state as highly bureaucratic as China, and on the other side, would allow to limit the contacts with foreigners to a reduced area and of easy vigilance, as the traditional Chinese xenophobia imposed.
The discovery of Japan then caused the intensification of the Portuguese activities in the Chinese seas after the middle of the sixteenth century, with two important consequences: on one side, Macao grew and quickly developed, changing into the most important commercial emporium of Southeast Asia; on the other side, an authentic informative explosion on China was observed. At this time numerous narrations dedicated to China, had been written by either Portuguese merchants who had been captives in inland China (Galiote Pereira, Afonso Ramires, Amaro Pereira), or Jesuits that at the time frequented the area (Melchior Nunes Barreto, Fernão Mendes Pinto).
The most important of these narrations is doubtless Tratado da China (Treaty of China) by Galiote Pereira (°1557-†1561). Quite impressed with what he saw, Galiote Pereira, besides referring to the vastness of China and the infinity of its population, openly eulogizes numerous aspects of the Chinese cultural reality, namely the perfection of roads and bridges, the impecable urban disposition, the rational organization of productive structures (crafts, fishing, agriculture, etc.), the efficiency of the local administration, the impartiality of the judicial system, etc. 15
With Tratado by Galiote Pereira, and with all the witnessed information written around the middle of the century, started a process of idealized criticism of the Chinese society, that would make of China, in the Portuguese culture, the privileged geographic place where all images of one exemplar society crystallize (in political, economic, technologic, administrative, judicial and even intellectual terms). Thus, we find echoes of news sent from China in some of the most important texts from the second half of the sixteenth century. Here are two examples:
João de Barros, in his Asia - Década I (Asia - Decade I), already shows an open admiration for Chinese civilization:
"Quanto a el-rei da China bem podemos afirmar que somente ele em terra, povo potência, riqueza e policia é mais que todos estoutros. Porque o seu estado contam em si quinze províncias a que eles chamam governanças, cada uma das quais é um mui grande reino." ("In what concerns the King of China, we can well say that only he in land, people, power, wealth and police is more than all the others. Because his state counts in it fifteen provinces which they call governments, each of them a huge kingdom."). 16Barros bought an educated Chinese slave to translate Chinese works that he purchased. Some years after, in Asia - Década III (Asia - DecadeIII), Barros multiplied the eulogies on the Chinese culture and civilization which he considered superior to the Greek and Roman:
"E verdadeiramente quem vir o modo de sua religião, os templos desta sua santidade, os religiosos residem em conventos, o modo de rezar de dia e de noite, seu jejum, seus sacrifícios, os estudos gerais onde se aprende toda a ciência natural e moral, a maneira de dar os graus de cada uma ciência destas, e as cautelas que têm para não haver subornações, e terem impressão de letra muito mais antiga que nós, e sobre isso o governo de sua república, a mecânica de toda obra de metal, de barro, de pau, de pano, de seda, heverá que neste gentio estão toalas cousas de que são louvados gregos e latinos." ("And truly who shall see the way of its religion, the holiness of its temples, the monks living in convents, the way of praying day and night, their fasting, their sacrifices, the general studies where is learnt all the natural and moral science, the manner in which they give the degrees of each of these sciences, and the caution they take against corruption, and the art of printing, much older than ours, and above all the government of their republic, the mechanics of all metal, clay, wood, cloth and silk works, we can say that these gentiles have all the things for which the Greek and Latin are lauded."). 17
Also Garcia da Orta, in his Colóquios is perfectly fascinated with China:
"São os Chins homens mui subtis em comprar e vender, e em ofícios mecânicos; e em letras não dão vantagem a alguns outros, porque têm leis escritas conformes ao direito comum, e outras muito justas [...]; os homens que vão à China vêem lá praticar muita justiça e usar dela; dão-se lá graus e muitas honras aos letrados, e eles são os que governam o rei e a terra." ("The Chins are men quite subtle in purchase and sale, and in mechanical craft; and in letters do not give advantage to some others, because they have written laws according to the common law, and others quite fair. [...]; the men who go to China see justice being done and its use; the scholars are given degrees and quite honoured, and are the ones who govern the king and the land."). 18
On another occasion, responding to a Ruano's reference who called the King of China "barbarian", Orta immediately reacts, replying that the King of China "[...] é um dos maiores rais que se sabe no mundo; e para falar nele e nas suas terras era necessário escrever um grão volume." ("[...] is one of the greatest kings known in the world; and to speak about him and his lands would be necessary to write an enormous book."). 19
This highly positive image of China, was common to practically all the Portuguese authors who dedicated themselves to the overseas things in the second half of the sixteenth century (Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, Gaspar Correia, Brás de Albuquerque, António Galvão, Damião de Góis, Cristovão da Costa, culminated in Tratado das Cousas da China (Treaty of the things of China) by Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, published in 1567-1570, in Evora, the first work exclusively dedicated to China to be printed in Europe. 20
In 1556, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz stayed six weeks in Guangzhou. Since his personal experience was based on verbal and written information of Portuguese who were jailed in China (he speaks about a "compêndio de um homem fidalgo" ("compendium of a noble man") had written, referring to Galiote Pereira), he wrote his Tratado which is a syntheses extremely well prepared on the conjunct of information the Portuguese until then had achieved to compile about China.
The Tratado's informative value is extraordinary. It is the first global description of the whole economical, political, administrative, social and even intellectual life of China. Fr. Gaspar da Cruz was careful in collecting data on all aspects of the Chinese reality designed of impressing the Portuguese reader's curiosity. His description goes from the general to the particular, approaching first the geographical location, the boundaries and administrative divisions of China, the fauna, the flora, to go further to questions of an anthropological nature, as the physical aspect, clothing, cuisine, festivities, music, writing, beliefs, etc.
It is important to mention that Gaspar da Cruz's Tratado refers to numerous characteristics of Chinese society that were not perceived by the medieval informers, like the use of tea, the Chinese writing, the typography antiquity, the Great Wall, the habit of foot binding, etc., information that would be transformed into the great themes of China's European vision, pratically until today.
Besides its value as a source of information, Tratado is specially important from the formative aspect, as Fr. Gaspar da Cruz transmits an extremely positive image of China, valorizing multiple aspects of the Chinese material and moral reality, and certain aspects of the superiority of Chinese civilization. Thus, the Dominican monk successively eulogizes the Chinese urban organization, the quality of roads and bridges, the rational utilization of the land, the artful crafts, the incorruptibility of certain functionaries, the low taxation, the state charity, etc. The final balance of Tratado das Cousas da China is frankly positive: in Fr. Gaspar da Cruz words: "[...] os Chinas a todos excedem em multidão de gente, em grandeza de reino, em excelência de policia e governo, e em abundância de possessões e riquezas." ("[...] the Chins exceed all in multitude of people, in greatness of kingdom, in excellence of police and government, and in the abundance of possessions and riches."). 21
Despite Tratado das Cousas da China having had a limited diffusion at the time of its publication (it was edited in a year of plague — of which the author actually died; it was written in Portuguese, a language that at European level was little known), had, indirectly, an enormous impact in the whole of Europe, as its information was diffused by two of the greatest editorial successes of the time, at international level. On one side, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz's Tratado was one of the major sources of the famous Historia de las cosas mas notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reino de la China, (Story od the Most Notable Things, Rites and Costums of the Great Kingdom of China)22 (1st edition: Rome 1585) written by Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, a work with about forty editions between 1585 and 1600. On the other side, it was the principal source of describing China included in Peregrinação (Pilgrimage) 23 (1st edition: Lisboa, 1614) by Fernão Mendes Pinto.
To conclude, it can be said that the image transmitted by the generality of the sixteenth century Portuguese texts dedicated to China is characterized by a constant positivity after around 1540, and that positive valorization has no parallel in any other region of the world frequented at the time by the Portuguese. The analysis of the image of China in the Portuguese culture of the sixteenth century and the determination of the reasons of its positiveness, 24 is one of the more fascinating cultural problems of [the Portuguese] Renaissance, as in the testimonies that reached us about the Portuguese vision of the other, besides the accumulation of ethnographic character information on the overseas realities, were crystallized, as in a mirror, the fundamental traits of the mentality of our cinquecentists.
Translated from the Portuguese by: Manuela Ribeiro
NOTES
1 This article summarizes a Report with the same title presented on the 7th of February 1990 to Estudos Gerais Livres (Free General Studies), in the auditorium of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (National Museum of Antique Art), in Lisbon. For pedagogic reasons, the notes were reduced only to essential details.
2 LOUREIRO, Rui Manuel, Portugal em busca da China: imagens e miragens: (1498-1514), in " Ler História", Lisboa—in the press — For deepening some of the questions approached here, where some of the facts mentioned in this text are duly founded and referred. [Also: BARBOSA, Duarte, Livro em que se dá relação do que se viu e ouviu no Oriente, in "Colecção de Notícias para a História e Geographia das Nações Ultramarinas" - vol.2, Lisboa, Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1813; 1st English edition: DAMES, Mansel Longworth, trans. and ed.?, The Book of Duarte Barbosa. An Account of the Countries Bordering on the Indian Ocean and their Inhabitants, written by Duarte Barbosa, and completed about the year 1518 A. D., 2 vols., New Delhi-Madras, Asian Educational Series, 1989].
3 CORREIA, Gaspar, in ALMEIDA, Manuel Lopes de, ed., Lendas da India, 4 vols., Porto, Lello & Irmão, 1975, vol.1, p.186 — All the quoted texts were modernized [Also: CORREA, Gaspar, Lendas da India por Gaspar Correa Publicadas de Ordem da Classe de Sciencias Moraes, Politicas e Bellas Lettras da Academia Real das Sciencias de Lisboa e sob a direcção de Rodrigo José de Lima Felner, 8 vols., Lisboa, Na Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1858-1866].
4 ORTA, Garcia da, in FICALHO, Conde de, ed., Colóquio dos Simples e Drogas da Índia, 2 vols., Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional - Casa da Moeda, 1891, vol. 1, pp. 204-205 [ 1st edition: Coloquios dos ∫imples, e drogas he cou∫as mediçinais da India, e a∫si dalg～uas frutas achadas nella onde ∫e tratam alg～uas cou∫as tocantes amediçina, pratica, e outras cou∫as boas, pera ∫aber cõpo∫tos pello Doutor garcia dorta: fi∫ico del Rey no∫∫o ∫enhor, vi∫tos pello muyto Reuerendo ∫enhor, ho liçençiado Alexos diaz: falcam de∫enbargador da ca∫a da ∫upricaçã inqui∫idor ne∫tas partes., Impre∫∫o em Goa, por Ioannes de endem aos x. dias de Abril de 1563. annos.].
5 Idem.
6 CANTINO, in CORTESÃO, Avelino Teixeira da Mota, ed., Portugalia Monumenta Cartographica, 6 vols., Lisboa, 1960, vol.1, ill.5.
7 ALBUQUERQUE, Afonso de, MENDONÇA, H. Lopes de - PATO, R. A. Bulhão, ed., Cartas de Afonso de Albuquerque, 7 vols., Lisboa, Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, 1884-1935, vol. 2, p.416.
8 BARROS, João de - COUTO, Diogo de, Ásia --Décadas, 24vols., Lisboa, Livraria Sam Carlos, 1973-1975 -- Facsimilaed reprint of the 1778-1788 edition.
9 PIRES, Tomé, CORTESÃO, in Armando, ed., Suma Oriental, Coimbra, Imprensa da Universidade, 1978, p.252. [lst English edition: PIRES, Tomé, CORTESÃO, Armando, trans., The Suma Oriental of Tome Pires: an account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515 / and the book of Francisco Rodrigues: rutter of a voyage in the Red Sea, nautical rules, almanach and maps, written and drawn in the East before 1515, 2 vols., London, Hakluyt Society, 1944].
10 VIEIRA, Cristóvão - CALVO, Vasco, Cartas, in D'INTINO, Raffaella, ed., "Enformação das cousas da China - Textos do século XVI",Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional — Casa da Moeda, 1989, pp.3-53; and in, ALBUQUERQUE, Luís de - LOUREIRO, Rui —PERICÃO, Maria da Graça, eds., "Notícias da China e do Tibete", Lisboa Publicações Alfa, 1989, pp. 7-64 -- In a modernized rendering of my responsibility. A new reviewed edition of these Cartas (Letters) is to be published soon.
See: FERGUSON, Donald, Letters from Portuguese Captives in Canton, Bombay, 1902 -- During a long time only available source for the letters of Cristóvão Vieira and Vasco Calvo.
11 ALBUQUERQUE, Luís de - LOUREIRO, Rui --PERICÃO, Maria da Graça, op. cit., p. 30.
12 Ibidem., p.33.
13 Ibidem., p.38.
14 LOUREIRO, Rui Manuel, Um Algarvio nos Mares da China: Leonel de Sousa (1554), in: "Boletim do Centro de Estudos Marítimos de Macau", Macao -- forthcoming.
15 PEREIRA, Galiote, Tratado da China, in D'INTINO, Raffaella, ed., "Enformação das cousas da China --Textos do século XVI", Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional -- Casa da Moeda, pp. 97-129; and in ALBUQUERQUE, Luís de - LOUREIRO, Rui -- PERICÃO, Maria da Graça, eds., "Primeiros Escritos Portugueses sobre a China", Lisboa, Publicações Alfa, 1989, pp. 9-49 -- In a modernized rendering of my responsibility. [PEREIRA, Galeotto, Alcune cose del paese de la China saputi de certi Portoghesi ch'ivi fuoran fati schiavi; e questo fu cavato d'un tratato che fecce Galeote Pereira gentil huomo persona di molto credito in quale stelte prigione nel sudetto luogo Tuchien alcuni anni, Venezia, 1565; 1st English edition: PEREIRA, Galeotto, WILLES, Richard, trans., Certaines reports of the province of China learned through the Portugals there emprisoned, and chiefly by the relation of Galeotto Pereira, a gentleman of good credit, that lay prisioner in that country many yeeres, 2 vols., London, Hakluyt Society].
16 BARROS, João de - COUTO, Diogo de, op. cit., Década I, bk. IX, chap. 2. [1st edition: BARROS, João de, Segunda decada da Asia de Joam de Barros dos feitos que os portuguese fizeram no descobrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do oriente, Lisboa, Germão Galharde (imp.), 1553]
17 Ibidem., Decada III, bk. II, chap. 7. [1st edition: Terceira decada da Asia de loam de Barros: dos feytos que os Portugueses fizeram no descobrimento e conquista dos mares e terras do Oriente, Lisboa, Ioam de Barreira (imp.), 1563].
18 ORTA, Garcia da, in FICALHO, Conde de, ed., op. cit., bk. I, pp. 159.
19 Ibidem., Book I, pp. 159.
20 CRUZ, Fr. Gaspar da, Tratado das cousas da China, in D'INTINO, Raffaella, ed., "Enformação das cousas da China -- Textos do século XVI", Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional -- Casa da Moeda, pp. 147-254; and in ALBUQUERQUE, Luís de - LOUREIRO, Rui -- PERICÃO, Maria da Graça, eds., "Primeiros Escritos Portugueses sobre a China", Lisboa, Publicações Alfa, 1989, pp. 50-186 [1st edition: Tractado em que se contam muito por estenso as cousas da China, com suas particularidades, e assi do Reyno Dormuz composto por el R. Padre Frey Gaspar da Cruz Ordem de Sam Domingos Diri∫gido ao muito poderoso Rey Dom Sebastam nosso Señor impresso com licença 1569, Lisboa, Andre de Burgos, 1570].
21 CRUZ, Gaspar da, op. cit., pp. 155.
22 [2nd edition: MENDONZA, Juan Gonzales de, Historia de las cosas mas notables, ritos y costvmbres, Del gran Reyno de la China, ∫abidas as∫si por los libros de los meßmos Chinas, como por relacion de Religio∫os, y otras personas que han e∫tado en el dicho Reyno, Valencia, Pedro de Huete, 1585].
23 PINTO, Fernão Mendes, Peregrinaçam de Fernam Mendez Pinto em qve dá conta de mvytas e mvy- / to e∫tranhas cou∫as que vio & ouuio no reyno da China, no da Tar- / taria, no de Sornau, que vulgarmente ∫e chama Sião, no de Calami- / nhan, no de Pegù, no de Martauão, & em outros muytos reynos e ∫enhorios das partes Orientais, de que ne∫tas no∫∫as do Occidente he mvyto pouca ou neh～ua noticia. [...]., Em Lisboa. Por Pedro Crasbeeck, Anno 1614. [1st English edition: PINTO, Fernando Mendez, Cent, H. C., trans., The Voyages and Adventures of Fernand Mendez Pinto, A Portuga: During his Travels for the ∫pace of one and twenty years in The Kingdoms of Rthiopia, China, Tartaria, Cauchin-China, Calaminham, Siam, Pegu, Japan, and a great part of the Ea∫t-Indias. [...], London, 1653.].
24 This is precisely the research I have now in progress.
* Preparatory School Teacher. Holds a scholarship awarded by Fundação Oriente (Orient Foundation).
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